During Spanish occupation, the Spanish language was actually declared the official language of the Philippines. To put the diversity of the Philippines into perspective, the country was previously occupied by both Spain and the United States. This is part of the reason why for the most part, the people of the Philippines are very welcoming to foreigners and tourists. The Philippines is commonly known as one of the most diverse counties in the world with a plethora of different languages, dialects, and cultures. The reason for this lies in the diversity of the country. However, the fact of the matter is that no one language will allow you to converse with the entirety of the Filipino population. For people who didn't grow up learning English, it's very possible that you won't be able to communicate with them in the slightest. However, this doesn't take anything away from the importance of learning Tagalog. The majority of people speak English at least at a conversational level. While is one of the major foundations for one of the national languages of the Philippines, actually only around a quarter of the Filipino population speak it as a first language. Tagalog is a language from the Malayo-Polynesian Branch in the Austronesian language family and is spoken by more than half of the population of the Philippines which stands at around 100 million people.

As Filipino and English are the national languages of the Philippines, you'll have a much easier time in your travels if you first learn Tagalog, which much of the Filipino language derives from.

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